The MFA Thesis

General Information

Ideally, your MFA thesis would be a full manuscript in your genre, one that you would be able to revise for publication outside of the program; however, we understand that this is a difficult endeavor to complete over the course of a year. Instead, your thesis must be long enough to suggest the overall plan and design you envision for the complete manuscript and demonstrate your command of your genre's ideas, techniques, and strategies. In prose, the manuscript should be in a window of 80-120 double-spaced pages (one-inch margins, 12 pt Times New Roman, etc). In poetry, the length should be about 30-40 pages.

All completed theses must be approved by each member of your thesis committee (see the particular signature sheet to use here, click on signatures_chss_cw_mfa). Additionally, they must also be accepted by the Department of English and the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, and all must meet the requirements of the Mason Library for terminal degree theses. Thesis proposals must be approved by the Program Director prior to initial thesis registration (aka ENGH 799 Thesis). This is done by completing and submitting the Thesis Proposal Approval cover sheet before registration opens for the fall of your thesis year (mid-April). 

The thesis manuscript, regardless of genre, should show each student’s ability to meet the intellectual and imaginative challenges of a longer work—such as identifying and defining a subject and theme that merit treatment at length; conducting necessary research; demonstrating a range of technique and craft; revising in a way that shows an ability to identify weaknesses and solve problems; and demonstrating an awareness of work written by other writers that is relevant to your own work. That is to say, your thesis should be informed by your academic career to date, integrating the writing techniques and strategies that you have learned through your time at Mason. 

Students approaching the thesis process without sufficient preparation—such as workshops of the proposed project, discussion with faculty, craft seminars, and literature courses that embrace the thesis genre—should not expect the thesis process itself to make up for all that might be lacking in preparedness. This does not mean that a successful thesis cannot be completed. It does mean that the thesis process and comments from Committee Members cannot be expected to bear the full weight of all preparation. In such a case, a final thesis may be a more thorough—if partial—manuscript of what will become a publishable work. The Committee Members have the first say in what constitutes an acceptable thesis, with their judgment to be confirmed by the English department and the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Thesis Committee Selection

A thesis committee consists of three members: a director and two readers. As part of the Thesis Director assignment process, students submit their thesis director requests to the Graduate Academic Coordinator, faculty in the respective genres review their coming year's thesis students, and then a faculty member is assigned to ensure an equitable distribution of labor across the MFA faculty. Two readers are then selected by the student in consultation with their Thesis Director. Your second and third readers are not required to read and provide feedback on your entire thesis. Instead, they will have varying levels of involvement, with your second reader typically providing more feedback than your third. To gain a complete understanding of the type and quantity of feedback you will receive, reach out to your readers directly. 

In prose (fiction and nonfiction), students have the option of asking a member of the MFA faculty or someone from outside of it to serve as their third reader. In poetry, the third reader should not be a Poetry Faculty member but rather a literature or Prose Faculty member. The third committee member also may be from outside of Mason, but that person must be formally vetted before joining the committee. Accepting the outside member is up to the Program Director, the English Department, and the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Thesis Director Assignments: See Early Thesis Prep.

Forming Your Thesis Committee (All Genres)

After receiving a Thesis Director assignment, students should think about who could serve as their other two committee members, inform their Thesis Director, and then move accordingly and quickly to ask those readers to serve on their committee. These requests are most commonly sent via email; however, they can also be confirmed via an in-person conversation. Generally, students will ask two other MFA faculty to serve as Committee Members, but cases can be made to have other faculty members (including other English faculty, other Mason faculty, or readers from outside the Mason community, who have been vetted and approved by the Program Director) to serve.

Once a committee is in place, a schedule should be planned out to include formal meeting dates and progress reports. You should also plan out preestablished dates to send first drafts, final drafts, and revised manuscripts to readers. That being said, the deadline for your final, formatted thesis is set by the university, typically for the first Friday of May. This final submission will be sent to the library. 

Note: Please see the Thesis Year Checklist here.

Note: Poetry students should keep in mind that they will not be allowed to register for their final three hours of ENGH 799 until they have passed the required comprehensive exam (taken during the summer between their second and third years).

The Thesis Proposal

Once your committee is in place, it’s time to draft a proposal. Proposals usually range from 2-3 pages in length. (There is no template for a proposal, but there is a Thesis Proposal Approval cover sheet.) The complete proposal should include a cover sheet, proposal narrative, and a representative creative sample pertinent to this project. This will be submitted to the Graduate Academic Coordinator prior to the end of your second academic year.

The Writing Sample

A writing sample can take a variety of forms. It might be a chapter of a novel, an essay, a representative short story, a series of poems, etc. There isn’t a set number of pages, but the sample must be long enough to let the reader make a fair appraisal of the quality of the writing. While it is impossible to predict in advance the direction creative work will take, approval of a creative writing thesis proposal indicates that the quality of the work is suitable, and if the remainder of the thesis is the same quality and is consistent with the general goals of the proposal, the finished work will satisfy the thesis requirement. In other words, your writing sample indicates that you have progressed sufficiently through the program to deliver a strong final product. Ideally, this would share a form or theme with your thesis. 

Preparation for Thesis Submission

In preparing the final version of the thesis, students must adhere to the format specifications set by the university. Formatting is an important step and must be approved by the University Dissertation and Thesis Coordinator (UDTS). Each student is responsible for ensuring that their thesis meets all such requirements.

It’s very important that you follow each step carefully. You need to include the CHSS signature sheet template. (Note: Each college within Mason has their own template; only the CHSS signature sheet will be accepted.) Once you have your information in the template, a quick formatting check can be done by sending your signature sheet as an email attachment to Sally Evans, the Thesis and Dissertation Coordinator. Sally Evans/UDTS MUST check and approve your formatting prior to submitting your thesis for Chair and Dean approval. Print official copies of the signature page for the collection of signatures (with which the Graduate Academic Coordinator can assist).

Email the coordinator at udts@gmu.edu to make these arrangements.

Thesis Submission Process

• Students should attend a thesis formatting workshop early in their process (this is separate from the MFA Program coordinated info session, which is usually in late Janaury, just after the start of the spring semester). Contact the coordinator at udts@ gmu.edu for scheduling information. This will inform you of the various steps you are required to take in order to graduate. 

• On occasion, students work with all three of their Committee Members, writing and submitting drafts and making changes in a timely manner, but typically second- and third-readers do not expect to see the thesis until the Thesis Director has approved it. Note: students no longer have to provide final printed copies of their theses, but some Committee Members may want to see paper copies during the writing process.

• As the draft is completed, email the document to udts@gmu.edu for format review and also to arrange a Submission Consultation.

• Print a Thesis Signature Cover Sheet. This can be found on the library website. Make sure you’ve clicked on the College of Humanities and Social Sciences link (CHSS), Master of Fine Arts. Incorrect thesis signature sheets will be invalid.

• Collect Committee Members’ signatures. The signature page must be approved and signed by the committee before the English Department Chair and the Dean of the College will sign. Original signatures are required.

• Make appointments with the English Department Chair and Dean to obtain signatures. Note that signatures usually cannot be obtained on a walk-in basis unless the Chair or Dean is holding open hours for such purposes. First, check with the graduate academic coordinator whether the procedure for obtaining signatures has changed.

• Follow the instructions provided by the UDTS to electronically submit the thesis and signature pages. Students can have copies of their thesis bound for personal use, but students do not need to turn in paper copies to be bound and placed in the library.

• Important: The electronic version of your thesis will be available for online viewing unless you embargo it as you submit it. A form is required to request the embargo, and it requires the Dean’s approval, by signature. Obtain the form as you make final preparations of your manuscript, and get the signature when you obtain the Dean’s signature on the final thesis signature page.

Thesis Embargo Policy

No one at the university disputes your ownership of your work. University leadership does take the position that graduate work should be shared with the scholarly community. This is primarily based on “research” in the more classic sense of the term and applies more so to students pursuing degrees that necessitate them to conduct experiments or literature reviews. The university system, then, is built to lean toward sharing information that is included in graduate theses and dissertations. For these purposes, they use an online system (or set of systems) that makes this information available to the larger world.

While the University embraces all work, including creative theses by MFA students, almost all of our creative writing students opt for an embargo. This keeps their work off the Internet for a specific period of time, preventing anyone from accessing it for free. Creative writing theses are unique in their marketability. It’s likely that you will continue to work on your manuscript after graduation. You may even decide to pursue publication. In the event that you do, having an embargo makes your work slightly more marketable; if anyone would like to read your writing, they’ll have to buy the book. 

Because of this, the embargo process is not standard (or common) in other areas of study, but it is very popular in creative writing programs. The faculty and administration of the MFA program support students in these requests and will continue to do so, keeping students informed of any changes or alterations to policies or procedures. Though the burden of maintaining the embargo falls to the student ultimately, we pledge to help remind students that:

- Embargoes will be granted for an initial period of 10 years. Embargoes can be renewed as necessary every ten years and are repeatable indefinitely. 

- Theses, though kept off the Internet by the embargo, will be available for viewing on campus only. This can only be accessed through the library’s Special Collections office. (This practice was established prior to the invention of the Internet.) Here, though, a graduating student can request to have the manuscript held out of the viewable files for a period of time starting right after submission. This would give you time to work with an agent, editor, or faculty mentor to see if they can immediately sell the book, and can do so without it being compromised even by a slip-up in the embargo system. This period of time could be a year or several years, depending on the situation.

- When graduating students submit their theses, they will be told how and when to renew the embargo, how to alter the provisions of the embargo they requested should they desire to do so, and how to stay updated on any changes in the embargo policy. This information is to come from the library staff.

Updated UDTS policies are found here.